CM PRINT CLASSICS: Issue 4

This was a pretty shitty issue, but I dug the early cover. A lot of this issue was shit I stole from other zines, in true zine fashion, but there was this one thing called 2nd Unemployed Friday about drinking beer with my dad, who's dead and gone now...
"I quit my job and I was down at my Mom's crib making a Wu-Tang mix tape for a white boy friend of mine, when my Dad called and said he was coming by to borrow my mom's jackstands and drink a couple of beers with me. I stopped making the tape and went out back shooting ball about the time he would show up because I was less of a nigger in his eyes shooting ball than listening to Wu-Tang. He showed up, we sat around drinking beer, listening to the local country station, with open lines, and I swear to Allah, some guy called in talking about how his 15 year old daughter was getting screwed by some older dude. The DJ told him to tell the cops, and the guy said, 'I would, but he's in with the law,' and this pissed my Dad off, the fuckin' law that is. He said a bunch of other funny shit, my dad that is, but I had done drunk a 12-pack already and it's 2 hours later and I can't remember none of it except for the guy calling the radio station. But I do recall my Dad hating his current wife (not my Ma Dukes) for siding with the pigs while watching Cops on TV, and really liking the new Travis Tritt song on the radio station."
I find it amusing how people think I'm some sort of internet gimmick, and I've definitely played that shit up so the nerds could get their comic book lingerie wadded up over it, but I'm very thankful for my mother's influence in my life. Had she not been there, I would've most likely been a real piece of shit. A perfectly happy piece of shit, but a piece of shit nonetheless.

#54 RAP TAPES: No Pressure

Ahh... what a piece of crap this first solo excursion by E-double was. I dug the beats a lot, but beyond that, there's not much to this tape. The one saving grace, and it's a large saving grace, is "Hostile" which introduces the world to Keith Murray, and this verse he did set us all up to think he was the next Jesus, but he never followed through completely. Still, if I was gonna make a retrospective 90 minute mixtape of EPMD shit and the related posse offshoots of necessity, "Hostile" would be up on that motherfucker definitely.

#55 RAP TAPES: From Pyramids To Projects

Two Kings In a Cipher had a song called "Tko'n" that was the jam, which caused me to buy this shit back in the day. Relistening to it, "Tko'n" is not the jam, at least not that much, and this tape sucks. Very lightweight Premo-wannabe jazzy beats and cliffnotes black intelligentsia, which was par for the course at that time as that was that day's tinkerbell beats with bling bling blind choruses. It is good to know, however, two kings could have a cipher and RCA Records was down with putting it out for mass wage slave consumption, should that have happened if it had been written, if it had been done.

NFL DORKERY: Eastern Division Teams Ranked

#1: NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS (1-0)
The Pats are not going to be close to the team they were a couple of years ago, especially now that they shipped off Deion Branch, but Belichek seems good at squeezing blood from stones, and even with the rag-tag pack of vets and unknowns he has here and there, they should be good enough to get by in the AFC East.

#2: DALLAS COWBOYS (0-1)
I am a Redskins fan and naturally hate the Cowboys and always hope for their chartered planes to crash after each and every game, but to be honest, if they hadn't have given the Jags that win last week, I would've had them easily as #1 out of these two divisional sets of teams. No, I am not a believer in the intrinsic genius of Bill Parcells, because without a coked up Lawrence Taylor super destructing things on turf, Parcells would have no rings. And no, I am not a believer that T.O. is going to do anything that continue to be a big goofy primadonna as he attempts to keep his true homosexuality hidden deep in a walk-in closet. Simply looking at the facts, the Cowboys have spent a ton of top draft picks in recent years on defensive players, and a good chunk of those defensive players have turned out to develop into something that matches the hype, which is not usually the case with high draft picks. So even if they are depending on that blank-eyed doofus Drew Bledsoe to quarterback the operation, I expect their defense will be punishing at times as the year progresses, and that old cliche is it's defense that wins Super Bowls, or at least wins the overrated NFC East.

#3: MIAMI DOLPHINS (0-1)
Okay okay, we get it... Nick Saban looked like a pussy tossing his challenge flag. Nonetheless, he has given the Dolphins confidence again in the last two years, and I think with a somewhat competent Daunte Culpepper at the helm rather than Jewish Ivy League quarterbacks, they could do some damage, at least by the watered down standards of NFL free agency salary cap era football.

#4: PHILADELPHIA EAGLES (1-0)
Eagles get a high ranking just because they were one of the few East division teams to win last week, and they should be much better this year now that the franchise had their T.O. tumor removed, but still, the offense lacks places for Donovan McNabb to put the ball. Donte Stallworth? Didn't the Saints dump that guy? He's the answer? What the fuck? And their defense just keeps getting older and older, but they've been a good team, and they jobbed out last year, so I expect the NFL to reward them with some beneficial booking and a wild card appearance on the big play-offs pay-per-view.

#5: WASHINGTON REDSKINS (0-1)
An offense full of ballet-like motions before the snap and a defense who's star is apt to get 15 yard personal foul penalties in the closing two minutes of a tight game... this is not the Joe Gibbs style team I grew up idolizing. They have been much ballyhooed though, so I will give them credit for now, and I am a naive fan, and I believe their success is not entirely contingent upon but needs my blind optimism to help them along. So I fully expect them to go 15-1.

#6: NEW YORK GIANTS (0-1)
Other than Jeremy Shockey, all the Giants best players are 47-years-old. And fuck Eli Manning. He hasn't done shit. I mean, his brother is like 9-time Pro Bowler and Peyton hasn't done shit, being the Jim Kelly of his generation thus far, so Eli is like if Jim Kelly had a shitty overhyped younger brother who came to the NFL and sucked for seven years before becoming an insurance salesman like all old NFL quarterbacks do.

#7: NEW YORK JETS (1-0)
The Jets have gotten no respect this year, and I don't think they'll be worth a shit, but I think they'll squeeze more out of this season than most experts give them credit for. Chad Pennington looks and sounds too much like that skater boi antagonizing super-prep rich kid from '80s films to not at least be fairly successful at any thing he does, before he like rips his shoulder off again.

#8: BUFFALO BILLS (0-1)
Your starting QB is J.P. Losman and your superstar RB was paralyzed like two years ago. Sure, you played the Patriots better than expected, but the Patriots are worse than expected and you ended up losing because of a fuckin' safety. You are the Bills and it's going to be a shitty season.

CM NET CLASSICS: Strap On The Feedbag, Fattie

[Recently heard from my man Adam Fast, who is heading out to the middle east as part of the burgeoning supply industry attached to the pretty well-set military operations going on over there for ever. Towards the end of the C-Mack site, when I was losing interest and Mike DIKK had his own site, Adam Fast was the most prolific contributor, and I was always dug his stuff, even if I did more editing to his stuff than anybody else's, mostly his textbook correct use of punctuation and my basic disgust with certain punctuation rules that I refuse to accept like any self-pretentious "writer" would feel appropriate. Here is a thing Adam Fast wrote on buffets, which I chose because I had heard at one point that Adam Fast was going to have a website all about competitive eating, which is something I've dabbled my obsessiveness in over the last couple years, and if somebody had actually done an all-encompassing competitive eating website, I would've been all over that shit.]
Strap On the Feedbag, Fattie
Buffets are the ultimate manifestation of American Gluttony. It is greasy excess in overdrive and a short cut to the Heart Attack Highway. All across this great land, fat people with fat hands push and shove as much food in their stomach as possible for the low, low price of $6.99.
My grandma loved buffets. She loved Old Country Buffet (OCB) in particular. In fact, all old people love OCB. That is why my cousins and I all called it Old Fuckers Buffet. The people in the dining room of the place looked like they were eating their last meal before they made their long walk home to the Lord. If you are going to die soon, you might as well do it with a full stomach. Grandma would drag the Grandkids out to the OCB whenever she was watching us. Depression Era mentality demands the most bang for your buck and at the OCB, you get a mother humping dynamite stick of food for a few measly dollars.
As a kid, I didn’t get much out of buffets. At most, I could put down a plate, maybe a plate and half. My fat ass cousin could eat for hours. He was a non-stop buffet warrior, even at the tender age of 12. I, on the other hand, was getting lectures from Granny about cleaning my plate. “Grandma gets very embarrassed when you leave food on your plate, Adam,” she would tell me. Well, Grandma also refers to herself in the third person so get over it. I do find it ironic that she was so concerned about me wasting food in a restaurant based on wasting food. While hunger runs rampant throughout the world, as well as in this country, we true blue Americans gather around long steam tables, overflowing with the goodness of meatloaf, catfish, mac-n-cheese, green bean casserole and over a hundred mayonnaise based salads. An American buffet is a middle finger in the face of the hungry. I would like to say I mind, but I really don’t. It is just how we are as a people. So, strap on your feedbags true Patriots and let’s talk about buffets.
Buffets have been around for as long as I remember but the Buffet concept seems to be growing at an exponential rate. While I have no facts to support this, the craze seems to have started with low rent chain steakhouses who began offering “Mile Long Salad Bars” and all you can eat Nacho Bars to go with their cheap cuts of meat and baked potato. As a kid, my family went to Bonanza, a low ball “steakhouse”, even though my Mom swore they sprayed the salad bar with a chemical that makes your stomach feel full. This prevents a 400 pound man from eating the restaurant out of house and home. Ponderosa and Golden Coral are of the same ilk. But the hungry masses craved more and that is when the shit got international.
Almost over night, every Chinese restaurant in my area went from being an actual sit down dining experience to a trough style pig out. Gone are the days of having a waitress in a cheesy Kimono style dress serve you sweet and sour chicken. Oh no…now you have to get the goods yourself and watch Bob and Susie Midwest shove as much General Tso’s down their throat before they fight for their fortune cookie. Great Buddha, please give us enlightenment!
Chinese buffets rub me wrong for a couple of reasons. One, I resent the fact the Asian people have to water their native food down so that it is palatable for idiots. When Asians come to this country and open a restaurant, regardless if they are actually Chinese or not, they have to go with a Chinese restaurant if they want to succeed. Here in the Midwest, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, etc, restaurants are few and far between. However, “Chinese” joints pop up like pimples on a kid with out an Oxy Pad.
Secondly, after already dumbing down the food, the owners have to further degrade themselves and put a bunch of bullshit out like a salad bar, chocolate pudding, and a friggin’ sundae bar. Here is a novel idea, how about some more Chinese food on your Chinese buffet? If I wanted the nacho bar, I wouldn’t come to a place called the Great Wall.
After a while, pizza joints wanted to get in on the crazy train we call buffets. I respect pizza places for trying, but of all the buffets in this great land, they are nothing but half steppers. In most areas, between the hours of 11 AM and 2 PM, you can find numerous chain pizza places slopping out all you can eat pizza for lunch. Included in the fee is the smallest and most retarded of all salad bars. I really don’t even know why they bother. To me, pizza buffets should more appropriately be called “Get Rid of the Toppings No One Eats”. How hard is it to make a pepperoni pizza? The pizza place throws up one “normal” pizza and within three minutes the shit is gone. What is left? A bunch of pizzas with combinations so nasty, the homeless wouldn’t eat them.
The only exception to the rule of pizza buffets comes in the way of an all buffet, all the time pizza joint called Ci-Ci’s. This beautiful chain of restaurants in the South and Southeast have made the pizza buffet an art. It seems every small town in Texas has one. At Ci-Ci’s, if you don’t see a pizza under the heating lamps that you like, the mo fo’s will make you half of a pizza of whatever you want AND announce the arrival of said pizza in a loud, obnoxious voice. Actually, everything they do at Ci-Ci’s is borderline obnoxious. If a Mexican pizza gets pulled out of the oven, the entire staff yells “Uno, dos, tres, Ole! Mexican Pizza is up!” Unfortunately, I forget the chant for a BBQ pizza. They also equip most places with a large screen TV that alternates between football (when in season) and the Cartoon Network. And what does it all cost? The whole sha-bang will run you $4.99 and that includes a drink.
Another half stepper in the buffet arena is the “home-style” eatery. Home-style eating is pretty much a Southern thing but these joints could be in the extreme North or on the East Coast. I know I didn’t see any when I lived in California. Regardless, these places serve shit in really big bowls or walk around with big bowls and scoop out how ever much you want upon request. Want more corn? No problem. Biscuits? Right here. The reason I call these half steppers is that they have no organized human trough for people to get their food. They just don’t leave me with a feeling that I am strapping on a feedbag to eat.
Believe it or not, I do like buffets. It is just that sometimes midway through my second plate of spaghetti, nachos and crab salad, I look up and grow disgusted at the sight of people lined up over a steaming table of nuclear food. Everyone talks about how America is growing fatter because of fast food, but why not point a greasy finger at buffets? On the other hand, I go to a regular restaurant and feel like I am getting taken for only one plate of food at $12. Hell, I could have spent half of that and had all I could eat. Then again, I don’t feel like complete and utter shit when I leave a regular eatery. Most of the time, after I go to a buffet, I end up vomiting. Then I am pissed because I am hungry again.
So for dinner tonight, celebrate excess by grabbing the kids, strapping on a feedbag and heading on down to your local buffet for some Country Fried American Gluttony.

#56 RAP TAPES: The Lost Generation

There was a point where the Wu was infallible - an almost indestructible force of MCs and producers that topped anything ever before seen in hip hop... maybe even better than The Juice Crew even though the Wu lacked the individual star power of The Juice Crew, they more than made up for with a thick stream of elevated rappers attacking sparse grime-filled instrumentals.
But then the Wu started showing their weaknesses, and for me, being a big Wu-head, this was long before Wu-Tang Forever came out. In fact, I consider that album to be pretty shitty, compared to their discography up to that point. But the real first chink in the armor to show itself up in full album form was this here Shyheim tape. His "On and On" single got heavy play on BET and was a good song of its own, and it made me go, "Whoa, there's like a kid division of Wu-Tang? That's crazy." But the full-length tape was a shitty capitalization on the Wu-Tang pop culture phenom going on. This was Wu-Tang's JV team trying to show and prove on the varsity level, when they should've hung in the shadows for a while longer, or at least just stuck to the occasional single.
I think what bothers me most about this tape, and others done by pre-pubescant male rappers, is the sex and violence songs. I know times are hard now and the world is a ghetto and kids give each other blowjobs all the time at recess, but come on man, when you're 12-years-old, you are not moving kilos and clocking mad bitches. It's fuckin' stupid, and rap like wrestling is something that you enjoy suspending disbelief so you can go, "Yes, Young Jeezy is selling a ton of cocaine throughout the nation," or you can think, "Yes Vinnie Paz is taking Illuminati overlords to task," but you're not gonna think that some little kid, no matter who he rolls with, is getting his dick sucked every night. And if he is, that kid is gonna end up being fucked up like Michael Jackson, and perhaps thrown down the hill by Mohammad.

CM PRINT CLASSICS: Issue 3

Ahh, another old shitty zine. For the sample, I'm gonna give you something that is inducer of one of my proudest moments of doing a stupid zine, as someone who knows the guy was hanging and Axl Rose ended up reading through this issue of The Confederate Mack, and he found this list to be greatly amusing. That shit has always made me proud, which also makes me a fag for being such a punk for some famous fuck I don't even know acknowledging my existence. Why are we all such bitches for celebrities? R.I.P. Crocodile Bill Dundee.
Anyways, here's 16 Reasons Dogs Are Better Than Girlfriends:
"1. When you come home from work pissed off, and you beat your dog for some simple reason, he doesn't involve the cops.
2. Dogs expect sex from behind.
3. You can let a dog out of the house and it won't run off with another owner.
4. When a dog does something you don't like and you yell at it, it cowers in fear.
5. Women tend not to lick your feet.
6. Women only come in one color at a time.
7. It's easier to tell when a dog is happy.
8. When you're holding something a woman wants, and you pretend to throw it but hide it behind your back, the woman is not tricked.
9. When you fire a warning shot in the air, a girl runs to the authorities, a dog just runs away.
10. If you're gone for a couple days without explanation, a dog will be excited when you walk back into the house.
11. Dogs don't mind listening to The Geto Boys.
12. If you ever happen to walk in on your dog masturbating, it doesn't hurt your feelings.
13. When you kick your girlfriend in the ribs, she won't necessarily move out of your way.
14. Statistically speaking, your dog will die before you do, your girlfriend won't.
15. A dog barks at strangers, a girlfriend fucks them.
16. Girlfriends aren't too happy when you throw a stick in the middle of the river and tell them to get it."
Oh man, I hated me some women back then. A couple of stupid slut girlfriends in a row will do that to a man.

#57 RAP TAPES: I Wish My Brother George Was Here

Being a white guy into rap, I find it personally important to hate most things that white guys into rap enjoy. But I can't do it with this one. I love hearing about how dark-skinned girls are so great, and about life in the meadow. It's funny to imagine Del and Ice Cube, true cousins, hanging at the family reunions when they were 11. And "Sleepin' On My Couch" is definitely my favorite song off this tape, mostly because I was the antagonist character from that song for like two years of my life at one point. Those were good days. When you sleep on someone's couch, have a spare key to the back door, and still can somehow bring a woman "home" to sleep with you, on the couch, much to the uncomfortableness of the apartment rent-payers come morning time, that's quality lifelong memories that can't be stolen by terrorists nor republicans.

#58 RAP TAPES: The Most Beautifullest Thing In This World

Man, when I first heard that verse Keith Murray kicked on that Erick Sermon song "Hostile", I thought he was gonna be the greatest shit ever. He ended up being pretty great, but never lived up to his full potential I don't think. He did have that one video where he poured a forty on his cereal when he woke up, and he gave the world, or at least popularized the term "getting lifted". I sometimes wonder where Keith Murray is now, and him being from Long Island and looking like a regular kinda guy, I always imagine him managing a couple of Foot Lockers and having two kids, the oldest of which he helps coach in football in the local youth league. I imagine he doesn't get high anymore, pretty much only drinks a couple of Heinekens now and again, and he and his wife have two nice pieces of African art, one small thing in the bathroom and one larger painting from Senegal they used to have hanging in their bedroom, but now that the boys are getting older, they have it hung right off the main hall going into the family room. And I imagine Keith Murray loves some video games, and now that his oldest is getting older, he can't always keep up with him out in the yard, but he can whoop his ass at some Madden.

#59 RAP TAPES: ATLiens

I remember somebody, probaby an expert whiteboy, listing the Outkast releases in order of greatness simply from beginning to end, which mostly made sense to me, except I really thought I dug Aquemini more than Atliens. Going back in time to relisten to shit though, I've changed my mind. Other than a couple of songs I really love off of Aquemini, it's the same indistinguishable quality but not interesting enough crap that the Big Boi half of that hipster critics craptacular Speakerboxx/Black Guy Sings In Funny Clothes Below shit. Atliens though, I dig. It's a weird tape, but I dig it. Dre 3000 was finding his weird-ass self on this tape, for sure, and if I ever become a Christian rapper, I'm totally sampling the fuck out of that "they call in horny because it's devilish" line.

#60 RAP TAPES: Little Big Man

You know, one thing that gets so overlooked in shit, and what helped make Rap-a-Lot awesome, was the beats that Mike D and John Bido hooked up. That was some good shit. I own three copies of the single for "Ever So Clear", off this tape, because that might be my favorite beat ever to just listen to over and over again. Bushwick Bill is such a gimmick rapper on the surface, like most Rap-a-Lot acts of the time, but if you break through the gimmick, and you get shit like "Ever So Clear" or "Copper to Cash", it's top quality stuff. It wasn't great enough a record for me to forget my better sense and get that Phantom of the Rapera or whatever the fuck that second solo Bushwick album was, but I still dig this tape. I think I made a mixtape not too long with "Copper to Cash" on it, in fact.

Death Valley Driver Video Review #158 Hype!

DVDVR #158
A little late with this link, but this is the last DVDVR I contributed to, from like a month ago. Dean's gone wrestling crazy and since done a DVDVR #159 as well, but I was out of the loop of motivation for that one. I should be back for #160 though, not that anybody gives a fuck, nor would anybody who might give a fuck even read this. Fuck it; at least I'm not Toby Keith.

CM NET CLASSICS: Sky-Blue Salvation Saturday Night

[My man Acehole resurfaced after a few years outside of each other's frame of reference recently, and this was always one of my favorite things he did for my site. He has a music critic's ear, which can suck, but he loves music, and I've seen brief glimpses of parts of his strange and elaborate record collection, so I love hearing what he has to say on certain sub-genres, such as this little piece about records that would save even my soul.]
Sky-Blue Salvation Saturday Night - Records That Will Save Your Soul by Acehole
1 - Rev Charlie Jackson - Louisiana Gospel Dynamite cassette (Curlew) 1988
Easily one of the finest recordings in my collection. Pure gutbucket soul shouting cum gospel-blues fury. The Holy Ghost in one hand, a switchblade knife in the other. Jackson was at times a sharecropper, a Mississippi cowboy, operated heavy machinery just outside of Houston and did the good Lord's work every mile of the way traveling in an dusty, late-model Cadillac-a guitar draped across the backseat and a the Holy Bible riding shotgun. By the early seventies lured by the prospect of better wages, a fish fry every Saturday and preaching the good book come Sunday Rev. Charlie found himself in Baton Rouge, La where he forsook all otherworldly pursuits for a full-time life of the cloth. Circuit riding with Shreveport's own "Two Winged Preacher", Elder Utah Smith they hit every Baptist church, Holiness shout and tent revival within a days drive from his trailer emitting the Holy Ghost through jagged guitar chords and hoarse vocals. Playing behind his back and between his knees like Jimi Hendrix lit afire with the Lord's Gasoline.
The self-released cassette, Louisiana Gospel Dynamite- collecting all of his sides for the New Orleans based, Booker label, stands as a testament to the pew-burning power of singing the good word through clenched teeth and furrowed brow. One need not be a Christian or religious at all to appreciate the full-blooded thunder of one-man whomping his guitar with a fervor obviously not of this world.
2 - Sister Rosetta Tharpe - "Precious Memories" Best of Sister Rosetta Tharpe LP (Savoy)
If Aretha Franklin (daughter of Rev CL Franklin) is widely regarded as the Queen of Soul, then Sister Rosetta Tharpe is without a doubt the Queen of all Sanctified singers. She a possessor of Arkansas accent and mercurial guitar skill straddled that great divide between pious condemnation and secular understanding. On my mantel piece there resides a wrinkled photograph of Rosetta Tharpe clad in a white fur coat, playing a Gibson SG that could've easily found it's way onto the slumped shoulders of Angus Young, in front a train station belting out a paean to those twin brothers, sin and redemption and staring into the sky looking for all the world likes she's waiting for deliverance or a nip of warm gin.
3 - Jones Bros - "Amazing Grace" Sun Gospel (Bear Family) 2000
Contrary to popular belief "Amazing Grace" was written neither by Joan Baez nor Cissy Houston; it was wrought sometime in the mid eighteenth century . It was the work of one English preacher by the name of John Newton. "Grace" was first published in 1779 in a book entitled the Olney Hymns. It stands as the probably the best known and possibly the best-executed tribute to hope in the English language. Written by a slave trader embittered with God due to his mother's early death, Newton's tale is one of wickedness. He captained a slave ship and abused his crew. Once, after falling overboard, his crew threw a harpoon at him rather than lower a boat.
It was during this particular torturous and violent storm at sea that Captain John Newton was saved unto God. The starving crew singled out Newton as a "Jonah" or bringer of bad luck, but in that near-death experience Newton had seen the light. The ship was named the Greyhound but it carried not dogs nor vodka.
In a smaller but more luxurious vessel (A Delta 88 no less) on one cold December Morning in Memphis, Tennessee in the year nineteen hundred and fifty-three four brothers crossed over the Arkansas/Tennessee state line, a journey some twenty years in the making to seek salvation and a recording contract at 506 Union Ave, under the employ of one Sam C. Phillips. That brisk Thursday morning James, Johnny, Hank and Walter cut two sides of hard gospel the likes of which had never been heard outside of Holiness tent revival. Fearing the Jones' brand of hard-edged sanctification too much for even the starched and prim Sunday morning revelers both songs remained un-issued for nearly forty years. The first of the songs cut that day was a breathtakingly raucous version of that old slave traders hymn, "Amazing Grace". How that single guitar and four very large voices ever fit into that tiny Memphis studio could only be known by the great one himself. Four voices exploding into cascading harmony that burns with the power of Gabriel's trumpet and the fear of another Monday morning on the farm.
The Jones' went to cut one more session at Sun studios and that one was released though by then the ravages of bad health and broken dreams had taken their toll on the once powerful voices but if nothing else their recording of "Amazing Grace" does answer the age old question if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to see it does it make a sound? Yes, it does. It just may well take forty years to hear it.
4 - Gospel Travelers - "God's Chariot Pts.1 & 2" 45 (Duke) 1952
In which the wind of a tornado is played by God storming through the Southeastern United States giving notice that he will be back someday and those not redeemed there's is no place on Earth they can hide. The best in a long ling of gospel allegories in which God takes the form of some sort of natural disaster, sickness or other epidemic to punish those who've sinned against him. The whipping wind and storm sound effects backing up the blood-curdling, multi-part torrential harmony make it even more harrowing.
5 - Rev.Lonnie Farris - Rev Lonnie Farris & The Gospel Flames LP (Eden) 1962
Another traveling Louisiana preacher. Played lap-steel guitar with a switchblade for a slide. Perched somewhere between the Holy Spirit and the un-holy mugging.
6 - Blind Benny Paris & Wife - "I'm Gonna Live So God Can Use Me" Guitar Evangelists 1927-36 LP (Truth Records)
Sounds as if one foot is in the graveyard and the other is firmly in the pulpit. Eerie as all get out.
7 - Brother Claude Ely - "There Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold this Body Down" 45 (King)
Though the harder strains of Black gospel music have never been at a real loss for documentation their
white brethren have rarely been afforded the resources and recognition bestowed by the patronizing, liberal yankee fanboys that have sought to keep alive ever lost/dying culture their enlarged pockets can afford to.
The un-heralded influence of Brother Claude Ely and his Kentucky/West Virginian Pentecostal and Holiness movement is like finding one of the missing lynch pens of 20th century popular culture. One only has to listen to the heavily blues-based cathartic thump of any of Brother Claude Ely's early fifties recordings (all now compiled on a CD entitled, Satan Get Back on the British Ace label) and then cue up Elvis Presley's first single, "That's All Right/Blue Moon of Kentucky" from a little over a year later and see the kind of influence the old-time church shouts and baptismals had on the birth of rock'n'roll.
8 - Holiness Church of Hazard, KY - "Great Speckled Bird/Old Time Shout" Mountain Music of Kentucky (Smithsonian-Folkways)
As above another prime example of White Pentecostal/Holiness church music. Just listen to the spine-tingling version of the oldest Pentecost anthem, "The Great Speckled Bird" and close your eyes and picture yourself in some small clapboard church, badly in need of a painting. Maybe you're in Jolo, West Virginia or Whitesburg, Kentucky and there are three men banging old flat-top guitars and double that man playing tambourines and over there behind the pew a young boy maybe in his teens is summoning the Holy Ghost from a pawn shop organ and eyes closed you can feel that rushing, that unnamed power rushing up through creaking floor boards filling you with spirit. Your knees are weak and the plainness of the King's English has transformed into alien tongues. You look and the man to your immediate right is wearing two intertwined copperheads like a crown of thorns and the women behind the disused pulpit is mixing strychnine in an old Mason jar and you can see the jubilant looks on their faces and you feel flush with fear. All thoughts of the Holy Ghost, salvation, sin, redemption have left you and all you can hope to do is fleeuz, see you and I we know to well, we've become to smart for belief. Too jaded for faith. And at the end of the day that's what were lacking- absolute faith. With the rush of knowledge comes the loss of innocence and the knowing will burn your eyes and keep you up at night until you're blind or just give up.
9 - Rev Isaiah Owens- untitled CD-R (un-released)
Rev Owens could easily be Montgomery, Alabama's gospel version of Hasil Adkins. All detuned guitars and frenzied shouting giving away to dolorous moaning and the stomping of feet on a hardwood floor. Owens for years did a 15-minute radio program on AM radio in Alabama alongside Sister Ann Talbert, hawking caskets and pimping his day gig at one of Montgomery's finer tonsorial parlors. If you ever find yourself in that neck of the woods and should you happen to run into a impeccably groomed guitar playing street preacher - say on N. Lincoln or South Court Street chances are your in the presence of one Reverend Isaiah Owens and you'd do well to stop a minute and wipe your brow and soak in a little Sunday prayer before Saturday burns your ass once again.
10 - Joe Townsend - "Take My Burdens to the Lord" On The Road Again: Country-Blues Obscurities (Flyright)
Townsend was a mechanic in Independence, Mississippi- working on Plymouths and Chevrolets by day and doing the Lord's work by night when two Swedish musicologists made the first and only recordings of his hyper-kinetic, funky renditions of standard gospel classics. Two further Townsend cuts are found on the seventies blues and gospel compilation album, Southern Comfort Country.

five more to get you thru the gates.
11 - Rev Louis Overstreet & His Sons of Thunder Congregation - "I'm Working on a Building"
12 - Rev Presley Thomas' West Coast Jubilees - "He'll Be There"
13 - Mother McCollum - "Jesus is My Air-O-Plane"
14 - Henry Green - "Strange Things Happening" 78 (Chance) 1951
15 - Stanley Brothers - "Are You Washed in the Blood?" The Stanley Brothers of Virginia LP (County) 1973

#61 RAP TAPES: Enta Da Stage

Man, hard to figure out how this finished as low as #61 when this was a tape I fiended for, looking for at the record store like every Tuesday and Friday on shipments of new shit days for two weeks, and it always being sold out. No shit. I finally gave up on the urban store and went to the college-kid store, Plan 9, and back then they had all their rap tapes locked up in a case, whereas every other tape was out in the open. So they had one copy and I had to go ask the chumpy eastern European looking fucker at the counter to unlock it and get out the Black Moon tape and it sucked, and then I rode my crappy 10-speed bike back to my crappy apartment with my crappy girlfriend and listened to the tape I had been fiending for ever since seeing the video for "How Many Emcees". And the shit more than lived up to the hype. This is still such a bonafide classic that the Boot Camp Clique, which hasn't really done much of anything worth a shit for a looooong time, still gets props in backpacker-ish magazines like Elemental and Mass Appeal, long after they still deserve them. Such a great great record, and the perfect blossom of lyricism amidst the grime of that time. Nothing seems grimy anymore, and there's not enough blossoms. And what the fuck was up with the 5 Ft. Accelerator? That's got to be the greatest rap name ever.

CM PRINT CLASSICS: Issue 2

There's really no need even to have that picture, as that cover took like four seconds to make, slapping a picture of the guitarist from Exodus and Dusty Rhodes squeezing blood out of Ric Flair's forehead together. The back page of this magazine has a Polaroid of me, Boomer, and Ivan and Vladimir Koloff where Ivan claims he will be my best always friends, but I haven't heard from him in years. Fucker.
Anyways, two little excerpts from this one. First from the Final Note on the back page: "Anything you read here that you think is racist or violent, it's just a joke, I'm not like that. Anything you read that's sexist or homophobic, it's for real, I'm like that." Ah, how I've grown. Now I don't even hate women or fags.
And secondly, I figured this zine was some time in 1996, but I've obviously jumped full-steam onto the millenial fever tip at this point: "December 31, 1999 falls on a Friday. At midnight, it becomes the year 2000, countdown to Armageddon. A New World will be rising around this time, and this particular New Year's Eve promises people in the street tossing cheap sticks of dynamite at police cruisers. Don't worry about a hangover, the place you're employed at will likely be reduced to ashes come Monday morning. The rich will be herded like refugee Africans onto encampments where they will be given overly-chlorinated water and thrift store bags of bread. That weekend will be the biggest party ever known... drug abuses of all types, lootings of Wal-Mart Supercenters and ABC stores, rapes of private school girls, burnings of immaculate urban churches, all in the name of change. It doesn't really matter what, we'll just burn it all down and start over. New Year's Day will become Independence Day. The wild will run wild and the fake will run home to die with their parents." Haha, that shit's funny now, but I do think I'd like to have that last line on a t-shirt.

#62 RAP TAPES: How A Blackman Feels

I guess some would say Schoolly had sort of fallen off by this time, and I don't necessarily think this tape sucks, but it's not up to his earlier standard. But fuck it, rappers get old and fat bellied and end up sucking eventually. It's music motivated by hunger, and if you're not hungry anymore, you can't pretend to be hungry. But you can pretend to be a gangsta, or drug dealer. Luckily, Schoolly doesn't do that.

#63 RAP TAPES: Ghetto D

I was way into No Limit at one point, I think once I bought the soundtrack to Bout It Bout It, which was also some of my earliest exposure to Sic Wid It camp as well (that one song "Come On" with B-Legit off that soundtrack is probably my favorite song on something that I've lost possession of). You hear a lot of southern rappers in the zine-ish glossy southern rap mags talk about how NY was always prejudiced against southern rappers, and Master P seems to be an example of that. I mean, he's no linguistical genius, but he also was never trying to be. And there's a catchiness to a lot of the better shit he did which was a pre-cursor to the annoyingly catchy crap like "Shoulder Lean" and "Laffy Taffy" that's blip blooping across the radio dials today.
Strange that P had to declare bankruptcy, because he, along with Rap-a-Lot, was a blueprint for being as independent as possible to increase personal revenue, and you wonder how a motherfucker who was making millions on a monthly basis could've screwed it up. But then when you think about him being Ricky Williams' agent for that initial New Orleans Saints contract that probably ruined Ricky Williams' life, you can see that P probably made some shitty business decisions, expanding into things he ought not to have messed around with.
But all that's beside the point. This is about Ghetto D. I think he explains how to turn coke into crack just as fluently as Biggie did, and I've got a strong weak spot for songs like "Weed & Money", "We Riders", or "Pass Me Da Green". Master P might not've written too many seventeen syllable bars, but he could come up with a hook. Or at least pay somebody well who could come up with a hook. And plus, pen and pixels cover art is still the king. I'm surprised more shitty indy rock bands haven't done pen and pixel covers.

CM NET CLASSICS: The Secret Pussy

[Ahh, this was always one of my favorite things on the stupid website, and it sucks I'm married with kids and had to write it under a fake name, just in case the odd chance my wife would stumble across the site. Now she may stumble across this, but fuck it, we've been married for years so we don't have sex anymore. That just leads to more kids.]
THE SECRET PUSSY
There was once a time when getting some pussy actually meant something. You had to work for it, and more so than hanging out and watching some shitty movie with Julia Roberts or that stick girl with the tits from the Noxema commercials in it. You had to talk shit, pretend to be something you’re not, which means a guy not all about sticking your dick inside of the sugar walls, and go through all the motions. You had to motherfucking sell the angle.
But now, girls fuck a lot. They fuck early in life, and they fuck often in life. Somebody along the way, probably some pornographer low on young chicks to bone in that same mansion he rents for all his movie sets, convinced women that sex was liberating, as men wanted it and you held something over them. So women started thinking by stripping their way through college, or holding pussy over top a dude’s head, they had some sort of Worldwide Power. All they did, though, was make abortion clinics a lucrative business.
Pussy is easy. Guys ride around in vans on porn tapes and pick up chicks to fuck off the streets, just like they were making fun of in Boogie Nights. Kids get pussy. Girls are having sex before they’ve got grass on the field, which used to be what we’d wait for to play ball. Getting pussy is so easy it’s gotten boring.
The thing to get now is ass. You see, it’s all about anal sex.
Girls play it off when you ask them about ass sex, but let me tell you something, all girls love anal sex. All of them. Your mom loves anal sex. All girls love anal sex. The thing is, they know the power they’ve lost, not only in personal enjoyment as well as actual power, by the pussy’s value being lowered by the market being flooded by all these whores. So they keep the anal love on the down low. This is why girls are expected to do anal in porn now, because anybody can watch some flick their boy made fucking some chick in a pussy, but only super-sluts and girls willing to be down with you for real, even if it is a trick on your part, give up the asshole.
You might be with a girl that all your boys have been with, and you all will be talking about hitting her skins, and one of the guys will go, “Yo, I fucked that chick in the ass.” And everybody will get all quiet, because nobody else got to do that. A couple even feel bad because they tried and got denied. The ass is the Secret Pussy.
That’s right, my friends, the Secret Pussy. How much Secret Pussy have you gotten? Are you a Secret Pussy virgin? HAH HAH HA! El Hijo Del Satanico has gotten mad secret pussy, because I remember how to work for the pussy. Young ‘uns expect pussy, since there’s so many sluts out there, and won’t waste time working at it. You have to push the proper buttons to get some Secret Pussy. You have to lay the groundwork, and pretend you care, just like the old days.
Here are a couple helpful hints at getting the Secret Pussy.
When 69ing, it’s always best to position yourself on the bottom, because that’s the laziest position. You don’t want to be exerting yourself too much early on in the encounter. While licking that girl’s cooch, just slip a tongue up to that part between the pussy and the asshole. Usually, they’ll moan. Keep doing that, to feel the situation out. Eventually, the girl will shift her body and be forcing the Secret Pussy downwards for you to flick your tongue at. If you are grossed out by licking a girl’s asshole, you are an idiot. You have eaten nastier shit in the last 24 hours. Have you ever thought about what a factory looks like that cans your vegetables or processes your meat? It’s way grosser than that girl’s asshole. And if she has shit on it, you shouldn’t be messing around with a nasty bitch like that no way. An added benefit of the shift of her on top is that now she will be coming from a higher angle to bob up and down on your dick with her mouth.
Another helpful hint is to get into the doggy style position. When in this mode, suck your thumb real good and rub it on her Secret Pussy hole. Sometimes, they’re afraid to let on to you about the Secret and they’ll act like it did nothing, but usually they’ll be caught up in the moment and they’ll moan heavy and start pushing back and forth harder. If you can work your thumb in there, you’re in good. Though this grosses me out as well, because you can feel your dick moving around with your thumb, but there’s womanly body parts in between those two appendages of yours, and I think about porn flicks with double penetrations, and it creeps me out to think of feeling some other dude’s dick moving around, even if it was buffered by female body tissue.
And the greatest thing about the Secret Pussy is that you can’t get a girl pregnant there. Sure, you can get sexual diseases, but what the fuck, we’re all gonna get a disease eventually, and I’d rather get it having sex than eating undercooked pork or some shit.
Secret Pussy is great. If you are dating a chick right now, and she is not at all about giving up the Secret Pussy, then she doesn’t really care about you. She’s saving it for someone she knows deserves it. And if you are getting the Secret Pussy, congratulations. It rocks, doesn’t it?

#64 RAP TAPES: Regulate... G Funk Era

Dr. Dre's little brother gives Dre Snoop Dogg to make millions with and all he gets is a brief little shine in the spotlight, riding Nate Dogg's one-note wonderful ass through this hit single. I know the G-child has steadily done shit over the years, but nothing on the mainstream consciousness level of the title song off this EP. Part of the problem was, other than Nate Dogg, Warren G had a pretty shitty slew of rappers on his tape. I guess another part of it is Dre wants to be white; I know because I read an interview with Suge Knight saying that. Suge wouldn't lie, because he's all about the kids.

CM PRINT CLASSIC: Issue 1

What a budget ass cover. At this point in my life, I was bouncing from couch to couch, and somehow ended up on the living room of my mom's floor, driving back and forth to Richmond an hour and a half away to work second shift at the newspaper, so I was only awake in the middle of the night at home and never saw my mom or sister who lived there, just watching crap on the satellite I got installed as a Homer Simpson-like birthday present to my mom and drinking ridiculous amounts of beer. Back then I was doing a new-named zine at every house I stayed at (previous ones were The Method Manson Skynyrd, Warship Say 10, and The Gringo Manifesto), but I ended up crashing at my mom's for like 10 months because the rent was free and I could pay off a stupid credit card I'd ran up my last couple months of college.
The Confederate Mack persona was far more over-the-top than now, and a lot less politically correct, which was kinda where I was, still all fucked up with Richmond haze in my head and feeling a sort of self-destructive recklessness realizing I had finished shitty college and now had to work a shitty job. That was eleven years ago I realized looking at the intro to this issue, which is a pathetically long time to do a zine, and not very good numbers considering I've only done 51 so far. Oh well, here's a couple comedic excerpts...
(From a list of misconceptions about the South): "1. We fuck our sisters... bullshit... the closest I've ever come is me and my cousin used to 69 all the time."
(From some rambling thing after watching Rodney Moore's Pussy Fest Vol. 3 after seeing a review of it in a magazine): "I learned a very valuable lesson. The women you can jack off to real good in a magazine may be the opposite of the ones you can jack off to real good in a movie. And when you figure in literary shit like Penthouse Forum and then jacking off on real live girls or just in the bushes by the river because it's a sunny day, you just can't judge right away."

#65 RAP TAPES: Tical

There's a couple of tracks on here I'd label as some of my favorite Wu-jambinos, but I've always felt like Method Man mailed it in sometimes. I mean, he was the first to get a solo deal out of Enter the 36 Chambers, and it's because he stood out amongst a crew of stand-outs on "Method Man", but he's never really put together an album full of that peak level shit. Although he's made plethora of passable tracks over the years, which is kind of like excelling when you consider how much a lot of shit sucks. I've just always felt like he never had his Liquid Swords or Only Built 4 Cuban Linx like you would've expected.
At the same time, when I listen to old Wu shit like this, it sounds so grimy and wonderful compared to most everything they did from like Wu-Tang Forever on, with some exceptions from the rule in recent years. I guess you can't replace grime in your music if you've lost the grime from your life, so you'd think a fan would be happy that somebody came up. Instead though, me being a bitch-ass internet geek, I'd rather complain about how soft and fat-bellied they got.

Confederate Mack Classics

So yeah, I miss my old website, but have been putting all my stupid energy into the zine instead of wasting my stupid energy on the internet. There's something nice about tangible printed matter as opposed to crap people find on google wasting their lives at work not doing work.
So I'm gonna start each week on this gay-assed blog with Confederate Mack Classics, which is about the gayest most self-important thing I could ever say, but there'll be two a week conceivably, one with something from the old website, hopefully by someone other than me, and the other one each week being a scan of the cover of the zine, starting with issue 1 and working up to present day, with maybe a funny snippet from that zine. No one will care, and the four people who come here will get to know more about old shit I did, which I figure will inevitably lead to six people coming here. Of course that'll be four new people and two of the old ones will stop because they'll finally realize I'm full of shit.

#66 RAP TAPES: Smoke Some Kill

How the fuck this finished 66th is a testament to how screwed up and non-hipster critic scientifical my mad method was in this thing. When I was in tenth grade, this was the greatest tape ever made, and to this day, you can take five gold mics, stuff them into Benzino and Dave Mays mouths as they engage in anal sex, probably with Benzino on the mount and Mays calling for the split-finger fastball, freeze them and paint them with gold-plated platinum paint, put a couple coats of high gloss polyurethane over that, and give that award to Schoolly D. The man's a motherfuckin' legend. Oddly enough, this is one of the few tapes that I can think of where the second side smokes the first side, although first side has the title track. Second side comes with "Treacherous" - which is probably more in tune with what revolution would sound like than Public Enemy or conscious rapper pussies, "Coqui 900" - which is a motherfuckin' party song and a half, plus the great fun of "Signifying Rapper", "No More Rock N' Roll", and "Same White Bitch (Got You Strung out On Cane)" - which might be the greatest song title ever if you forget that she ain't got no panties on out on the dance floor song.
Schoolly D - I saw you on Space Ghost back in the day so I bet you fuck around on the internet a ton if you did some wacky shit like that, and I bet you google yourself (which makes me sad, because typing "smoke some kill" in google images only came up with like four different places this cover was at, whereas I could type in J.R. Writer and there'd be thousands), and if you come across this, thanks for the music. Shit, I still got that "Another Sign" single on vinyl. And Saturday Night on vinyl. I used to have that Education of a Black Man (or whatever it was called) CD, but I gave it to this dude who used to sell weed for me. He ended up getting convicted for raping both men and women, so I would assume when you say Jesus was a black man after reaching in your pocket, I don't think you were speaking of him. At least I hope not. I'm not religious, but I don't like to think of the major prophet of the most major mindwashing religion in my stupid country being someone who is equal opportunity rapist. Then again, I guess it would make sense.

#67 RAP TAPES: Loc'ed After Dark

Yep, Tone Loc. Basically, I'm a sucker for a couple of these beats, namely the "On Fire" and "Loc'in On the Shaw" ones, which were Dust Brothers pre-cursors to the filler bits they'd later do with The Beastie Boys. You could've took any gravel-voiced happy-go-lucky brother and made money off some of these more poppy beats, though Tone Loc fit the bill perfect. And to this day he can get a job doing cartoon voices, which is far better than getting into shootouts with the Boo-Yaa Tribe, like he used to.